1ST FRIDAY @ GALERIA WEST Music Series Event with FRANCISCO NAVARRO & CARLOS PAVAN in Concert

Galeria West Art & Music GalleryWestfield, NJ

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If available, walk-up tickets can be purchased at the door on event date starting at 7:00pm. Showtime is 7:30pm to 9:00pm. Call the TEATRO Si box office on event date for walk-up ticket availability information: 908-301-9496

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1ST FRIDAY @ GALERIA WEST Music Series Event with FRANCISCO NAVARRO & CARLOS PAVAN in Concert

The popular bi-monthly 1ST FRIDAY @ GALERIA WEST music series continues with a special music concert performance by acclaimed Argentine guitarist Francisco "Pancho" Navarro along with classic guitarist Carlos Pavan on Friday, September 5, 2014 at 7:30pm at the wonderfully intimate Galeria West Art & Music Gallery, located at 111 Quimby Street in downtown Westfield, NJ. Enjoy a unique evening of Latin American classics and more as performed by these superb music artists.

Why is it that one of Latin music's true virtuosos an acknowledged master of his instrument for over forty years has never made his own album until now? "There were some previous opportunities," says Francisco Pancho Navarro, the Argentine-born, New York-based guitarist. "But I think this was the right time to do it." The "Sweet Guitar" CD shines an overdue spotlight on an artist who has spent most of his career enhancing the work of others. Maybe you heard him playing throughout Elliot Goldenthal's Oscar-winning soundtrack for the film Frida, or accompanying Plácido Domingo in a recording of Die Fledermaus made in 2003 at the Washington Opera. The Rolling Stones used Navarro on a 2006 remake of "I'm Free," their early single; Paulina Rubio ("Perros"), Cristian Castro, Victor Jara, Celia Cruz, and Armando Manzanero sang to his backing. "I always worked with my guitar to make my ends meet but I've been fortunate to meet the right people in show business," he explains modestly. Pancho, as he's commonly known, can equal any of them. Out of his fingers comes an orchestral array of string and percussive sounds; a rhythmic and harmonic flair that few jazz musicians can equal; an elegance born of years of classical study; an arranger's sense of architecture; and a wealth of beauty, feeling, and wit. Sweet Guitar is a diary of the music that shaped him, gathered in his lifelong travels through South America. "The way I play my guitar comes from absorbing the different styles and colors of our Latin American culture and blending them with my style of performing classical music," he says. It's an approach that endeared him to Soundbrush Records founder Roger Davidson, a fearlessly adventurous composer and pianist with a special affinity for Latin music. He and Pancho played together on Roger's album of boleros and rumbas, Pensando en Ti; he's also a member of another of Roger's ensembles, The Tango Group, which made its first CD, Amor por el Tango, in 2003. But on Sweet Guitar, Pancho's only partner is his occasional overdubbed self.

Navarro was born in 1944 in La Consulta, a township in Mendoza, Argentina's wine state. Pancho wasn't quite a teenager when his father, a policeman and amateur guitarist, gave him his first guitar and showed him the basics of playing it. He began taking formal lessons at thirteen. While working with local dance bands he immersed himself in tango and the Argentine folklore that surrounds it; as he studied classical guitar he pored over recordings by Andrés Segovia, Los Romeros (the Spanish guitar-playing family of the '60s), John Williams, and Paco de Lucía. Meanwhile, he brought his guitar all over South America, settling the longest in Chile and Mexico. Wherever he went he was hired by the best local musicians and singers.

In 1984, after a decade in Mexico City, Pancho took his wife and three children and moved to New York: "the city I have looked up to ever since I was a kid, and considered to be the most important place for a musician's career." The gamble paid off. He became a first-call Latin guitarist on A-list sessions everything from the soundtrack of The Mambo Kings to hip-hop and reggae tracks. On his "Sweet Guitar" album, he had the luxury of playing the music he cares about most. Pancho wrote Sweet Guitar/T.Q.P.S. some years back in New York. "When I met my wife," he says, "we used to communicate with each other by letters, and at the end of our love letters we had this beautiful way of saying goodbye: T.Q.P.S., Te querre por siempre. That means, I will love you forever."

Carlos Pavan began his guitar training at the age of 12 and has since become one of the most diverse guitarists and composers for contemporary music (guitar , strings, wind, brass and chamber). Upon his graduation from the school of popular music, La Colmena (Argentina), he started teaching in private schools while traveling to Buenos Aires to study under Pino Marrone (jazz guitar) . Carlos arrived to New York in 2000 to pursue musical studies & received a full, 2-year scholarship at The Collective , he has studied under Pat Martino (jazz guitar), Dario Esquenazi(Paquito de Rivera),Thomas Milliotto(Brooklyn Conservatory classical guitar), Jesse Henserkiefken(conducting), Jorge Morel(classicalguitar/composition), Dave Smey (Brooklyn Conservatory, counterpoint/composition) and Pablo Ziegler (Astor Piazzolla's piano player, composition/orchestration/arranging).